A parameter extraction method of the PIN diode for physics‐based circuit simulation over a wide frequency range.

The accurate physical parameters of the semiconductor devices are critical to the physics‐based circuit simulation, which solves the carrier transport equations to model the semiconductor devices. However, the conventional method extracts physical parameters from low‐frequency measurements such as the DC I‐V curve, which cannot work at high frequencies. To overcome this problem, we propose a physical parameter extraction method of the PIN diode working well from DC to microwave frequencies. Specifically, because the transit‐time effects are dependent on the working frequencies and input power levels, the operation modes of the PIN diode can be divided into three cases from DC to microwave frequencies; therefore, the proposed method extracts the parameters from three measured curves, including the DC I‐V curve, a small‐signal, and a large‐signal voltage waveform both at a microwave frequency. Experiments of a PIN diode SMP1330 circuit show that the error of the conventional method is about 45% at frequencies above 300 MHz, but the maximum error of the proposed method is only 9.5% from DC to 2 GHz. Moreover, the conventional method is unable to characterize the conductance modulation phenomenon, which leads to unexpected signal reflections in PIN limiter circuits and the missing of information in radio transceivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]